There’s a certain kind of news consumer for whom the news is always a distraction from the real news. The character of whom I write has rarely been more in his (or her) element than they are during the ongoing coverage by this and other media outlets of the Oireachtas Bike Shed mess.
“It’s a distraction”, they say. “They don’t want you looking at the real news” – which, invariably, is something they themselves consider to be more important. Often times, this assertion that the news is a distraction is married to an assertion that the distraction is deliberate – that we who write about the news for a living are in essence either being duped or acting as willing partners for the shadowy string-pullers up top who want the public thinking about bike sheds and not, say, whatever the latest EU directive is.
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